Writing and Stuff by Anthony Chatfield

I try to be at least a little modest every now and then, but there are some topics I know pretty well, based pretty heavily on the experience I’ve racked up in recent years. One of those things is how to write an eBook, so I thought I’d bring that knowledge to bear here for a short course on how to do just that.

Grab Your Laptop and Write an eBook

The next few parts in this series will cover exactly how to brainstorm, outline, and write an eBook that can be sold as an informational product or used to promote something else you’re trying to sell. Despite what some of my colleagues would say, I always like to think that the content comes first, so I take this process very seriously and alway pour a good bit of energy into creating well written, highly focused eBooks that are actually valuable to their readers. That’s what we’re going to work on.

As a note, this is a guide for those interested in informational eBooks for distribution on the Internet – not for digital novels or non-fiction books. However, most of the tips in these guides will probably work just as well for those types of books if that’s your goal.

For the first message, I thought I’d keep things pretty simple and focus on how you’re going to choose the topic for your eBook. It’s probably one of the hardest parts of the process and for many marketers, if it’s done poorly, it results in a whole lot of work for not much gain.

What Do You Know?

Simple question. Probably lots of answers too. The first thing you should ask yourself is what you know about. If that fails, what are you willing to learn about. This has less to do with your innate knowledge (because god knows that research on the Internet is easier than ever) and more to do with your interest level and motivation. If you choose a topic you know nothing about, the odds are that you don’t care all that much about the niche in the first place. That may not be true, but it tends to hold course for most topics.

On the other hand, if you choose a topic that you know a LOT about, even if you don’t like that niche, the writing process should be smooth. You won’t need to rely on research alone to make it happen. Plus, when you’re an expert in a field, it tends to be much easier to find a unique angle from which to write the book – when you can tap into that unique angle, you will save a tremendous amount of time and energy and probably capture more attention.

What’s the Book For?

Before you can go any further, you need to know what the book is for. Are you selling it? Are you giving it away? Are you writing for the sake of writing? It doesn’t really matter what your purpose is in terms of how you write it, but when it comes to selling it, you had better be sure that the topic you’ve chosen is going to be marketable.

Can You Sell It?

This is the biggie. Can your topic be sold. I refuse to tell anyone that an idea cannot be sold, but I will sometimes hold my tongue as I wonder just how it is going to be done. The key here is to know exactly what kind of market you have. Are there people out there buying guides like yours already and if so, how many of them are there. How many people are in your niche and what kind of opportunities are there for growth?

An easy way to do some quick research, if you plan to sell your guide, is to look on Clickbank’s Marketplace. Here, you’ll find many of the top selling eBooks on the Internet. The higher the gravity, the more people are selling that book and the larger its niche probably is. I don’t recommend copying anything out right – but you may as well see how your niche is represented.

The Clickbank Marketplace

Case in point – I had a client who wanted a new guide written about how to create your own energy, like all the big Energy4Earth style guides out there right now. They asked whether I thought the guide would sell or not. I said, sure thing, but you’d better market it well because competition is fierce right now. I recommended a similar guide, but one that focused more on how to make a house’s existing systems more energy efficient. There were a couple of guides like that but none of them were all that good. Turns out, he did fantastic with that topic, just by finding a slightly different angle than what everyone else was using.

He still got the niche he enjoyed working in, but he managed to get a guide that stuck its landing well within a hungry niche that was interested in what had to be said.

A Short List of Topics

That’s about as far as I can take you in specifically getting you a topic for you book, but just to get you a head start, here is a list of popular niches that tend to remain popular regardless of things like the economy or the time of year. If you write a book that is different and interesting in one of these niches, you stand a good chance of creating something profitable:

(note: Click on any keyword below to do a Google search for it)

• Muscle Building
• Solar Panels
• Wind Power
• Acne Care
• Vegan Foods
• College Guides
• Skin Care
• Weddings
• Dog Care
• Golf
• Learning Languages
• Stress Management
• Anxiety
• Anti-Aging
• Weight Loss
• Divorce
• Time Management
• Quitting Smoking
• Yoga
• Satellite TV
• Vacation Homes
• Getting Employment
• Insurance
• Massage
• Dating
• Small Business Building
• Gardening
• Organic Cooking
• MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online RPGs)
• Self Coaching
• Making Money from Home
• Home Décor
• Pregnancy
• Home Security
• Stopping Identity Theft
• Car Repair
• Yoga
• Real Estate
• Cruises

This is by no means a complete list, but it can help you get started with your new eBook if you’re looking for ideas.

Some Websites to Check Out

Want to do a little more research on your own while you’re at it? Here is a list of websites I use for niche research when I need new ideas to get an eBook started:

• EzineArticles.com – A huge article directory filled with topics and content that you can start brainstorming with.
• Amazon.com – The world’s largest online store. Use Amazon to see what people are buying and what you might be able to help them with.
• WordTracker.com – A paid keyword research tool that helps you look up related topics to your niche. Make sure to sign up for the free trial first.
• Google Keywords Tool – Google’s AdWords Keyword Tool. This is completely free but doesn’t offer quite as much info as the paid ones. It can be very helpful for basic research though.
• SpyFu.com – Provides details about current ads for a given keyword. Lets you see how competitive your niche might be with costs per click, recent data, and more.
• Quantcast.com – Demographic information for specific websites and keywords. See who is interested in which topics and how many of them are out there.
• PayDotCom.com – Information publishing and payment service like Clickbank. Look through their marketplace for ideas.
• Clickbank.com – As mentioned above, a great tool to help research what is hot right now and what topics you can get in on or find new angles to work with.

This is just a smattering of tools out there. You can also look on blogs, research local news and headlines, read up on the current trends on forums and much more. Don’t hold yourself back. Do your research and find ways to get the best topics out there.

Next Time

Hopefully this post has been helpful in preparing you for writing your eBook. Next time we’ll talk about how to outline your book before writing to minimize writer’s block and to be sure you don’t miss any important topics in the content.

Writing Guides ebook writing, how to write, make money online, writing a book, writing courses, writing for money

It’s that time of the year again, which means I’m about to commit to NaNoWriMo, the national novel writing month event that kicks off in November. Usually around the end of September each year, I get very excited and start going on at length about what I’m going to write about, how it will be written, how you can keep up with the writing, etc.

This year, I’m going to minimize all that excitement, because I don’t want to jinx it. I’ve only completed a novel once – in 2007. In 2006, I got to 26,000 words and last year I only made it to 15,000. So, what exactly is it that slows me down in that awful 10,000-30,000 range?

My Novels and their Foibles

It depends really – last year I was just really busy. I write for a living, so spending another hour a day writing, while seemingly not that bad, was just too much. Plus it was November and things are always busy in November.

Second, I tend not to plan my novels ahead of time. I never paid this any mind before because I didn’t plan anything I wrote ahead of time. Now, I write all day and I tend to write a lot of eBooks for my clients, so I’ve come to realize just how much more effective I write when I have a very detailed plan to work from.

Finally, I occasionally start to dislike the novel I write. I don’t know why and it doesn’t always happen, but it’s happened at least once before. I think I’m overly ambitious and when I can’t do all the things I had in mind within 50,000 words and 4 weeks, I get frustrated.

The Solution

So, this year, I’m going at it in a different way. I’m going to start outlining the thing in a couple of days – probably when the forums go up on October 1st. Then, I’m going to not write about it here at all. I’ll just write the novel, not think about it at all and be 100% okay if the thing makes absolutely no sense when I hit 50,000 words. Finally, I’m going to actually have an ending in mind and attempt to get there. The 50,000 word count is extremely short, and even in ’07 when I made it, the book wasn’t really done yet – so this time around, I’m going to stretch things out a bit and see what comes of it.

All I can do now is hope that I don’t get inundated with work like last year. Thankfully there’s no WoW expansion this fall.

NaNoWriMo NaNoWriMo, novel writing, writing a book

Chapter 1

Brutus looked deep into the alleyway, obscured by the dust and detritus of a hundred hungry rats and dozens more of the insects that fed on them. It was a slow night in the back alley office. Forget nights. Nights were always slow. It was a slow month in that back alley and Brutus needed the fresh air. Days on end he’d spent listening for the knock. Not that it mattered much anymore. The nights were growing shorter and in a couple more weeks, he’d be out on his ass, picking old banana peels from the trash with the rats.

No, Brutus was more than just hungry for a bite of clean air, not something he’d find in the smoky confines of the city’s darkest trenches. He wanted a bite of something juicy, anything really. Boredom had stolen over him with the kind of determination he come to expect from despair and the raw thirst for whisky that hit around moonrise each night. He wanted a bit of action and if it wouldn’t come to him, he may as well find it himself.

Not that that would pay the bills though. Brutus Weaver had moved into the back alley room only a year ago. It was a cozy little bungalow, if you fancied the smell of moth balls and urine and didn’t mind a bed made of sewn together burlap sacks. It wasn’t the worst place he’d ever stayed though and he wouldn’t entirely loath the idea of having a few more months there.

The minutes passed and Brutus Weaver finished his cigar; there was only one left now, a final goodbye from an old friend. An old friend that hadn’t been around in a good long time. He snuffed it out and kicked the stub towards a pile of hungry rats, hoping they’d scatter. Pouncing on the smoldering cigar end, they moved closer. Couldn’t even scare the rats in this part of town these days.

The inside of his office/home was fit for a King if you considered the conditions just on the other side of the door. Fortunately, Brutus was about as much of a King as he was a detective these days and the room was workable. Compared to previous locales, it was downright cozy if you discounted the nest of ants living behind the woodstove.

Everything was carved in the cheapest wood the building’s owner could find, quickly fit together with tiny wood nails and unmeasured cuts. His meager bookshelf, ten books wide at best and two shelves high sat crookedly above his tiny, one armed desk. Currently, two editions of the City Guard Manual and three volumes of his youngest daughter’s favorite nursery rhymes sat sideways on the top shelf, hanging precariously over the edge, threatening to fall at any moment. The desk was built for a Scribner, one single slab of wood set atop four feeble legs, barely wide enough to hold a bottle of ink and three sheets of paper. It had a bottle of whiskey and two dead lizard-like creatures on it at the moment.

The latrine was no better than a hole in the ground, carved behind the wall beside his bed. The plumbing in the city had always been a proud addition, trumpeted by the King as a heralding achievement of “civilization”. It worked one in three days and when it did, the room smelled of death. Collapsing backward on the burlap bed, a loose collection of dirty feathers padded into the dirty old sack, Brutus stared at the ceiling, wondering why it was he had not poured the whiskey yet.

The room was almost claustrophobically small when he was sober and the effect was draining much of the ambition he had until recently felt coursing through his veins, telling him to seek danger. The night was dead and his room was trying to crush him and add to the living corpse of the Lower City.

For how long he laid there, staring at the smattered gunk-lined patterns on the ceiling, Brutus wasn’t quite sure, but he was sure of was that in the last thirty seconds or so, he had just heard the most beautiful sound in the world, the dull rapping of a human fist on the outside of his door.

My Fiction blog novel, chapter 1, fiction online, novel writing, online novel, writing a book